BloombergCredit Suisse Group AG cut its main profitability target for this year and next, as trade tensions and negative interest rates cloud the outlook after a three-year restructuring. Credit Suisse is not alone as banks across Europe struggle to reach targets, with interest rates likely to stay negative for the foreseeable future. The bank is pinning its wealth management growth on a strategy of cross-selling investment banking services to ultra-high-net-worth clients while making better use of technology for more modestly rich customers. Credit Suisse said it seeing pressure from negative rates at the Swiss Universal Bank, the lender’s largest unit by profit. With negative interest rates of 0.75 percent on deposits in Switzerland, the bank has begun to pass on the costs to its wealthy clients, while it is also selling real estate to mitigate the effects.

By Natasha Li / Staff reporterInvestments in fixed assets, excluding land, by the nation’s manufacturing sector hit a record NT$349.1 billion (US$11.44 billion) last quarter, led by accelerating investments from semiconductor companies, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said in a report on Tuesday. The ministry also noted a rise in fixed-asset purchases by other electronic components makers as they expanded capacity in light of upcoming 5G rollouts. In the first three quarters of the year, fixed-asset investments surged 23.7 percent year-on-year to NT$1.01 trillion. The electronic components industry similarly witnessed a 3.1 percent drop to NT$1.39 trillion, as the flat-panel market remained oversupplied, while prices of DRAM and passive components slumped, it said. Revenue from the sector totaled NT$19.98 trillion in the past three quarters, down 3.4 percent year-on-year, the ministry said.

The prosecutors should be commended for tracking down the primary suspects responsible for spreading the rumors. Hopefully, they will take advantage of the public mood to intensify their efforts to investigate and prosecute other people who spread disinformation. However, rarely do the authorities discover where these fake news stories originate and seldom are the culprits punished. In doing so, they are clearly guilty of using a slippery slope fallacy, by which they posit a string of supposed causes and effects, and then intentionally exaggerating the extent of causation between each link in the chain, leading to a dubious conclusion. If a pundit swears to stand up for a political party and employs a slippery slope argument based on little or no evidence to criticize and attack an opposing party, then that pundit is either ignorant about logical inference or an incompetent commentator who makes false accusations about other people.

Andrew last month said in an interview with the BBC’s Newsnight that he met Epstein in 1999, through Epstein’s former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell. While it is not disputed that Andrew met Epstein through Maxwell, some have said that they met earlier than 1999. How close were Andrew and Epstein? The same year, Epstein and the prince partied with now-US President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, his residence in Palm Beach, Florida. The following year, Andrew and Epstein went on holiday together and were pictured on a yacht in Phuket, Thailand, surrounded by topless young women.

The prevailing wisdom is that, as far as the “Taiwan issue” is concerned, due to China’s increasing military strength and regional dominance, time is on the CCP’s side. On Monday, a German Ministry of Foreign Affairs official rejected a petition initiated by a German national, Michael Kreuzberg, asking Berlin to formally recognize Taiwan. This surprised nobody, least of all Kreuzberg, but there are still reasons to take heart from the process. Through the petition, Kreuzberg also compelled the German government to discuss the issue in a public forum. Kreuzberg also said that the issue reportedly has support among politicians from several parties, despite the rejection, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union.

By Lee I-chia / Staff reporterTaipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) yesterday said that if everything goes well and he remains healthy, he plans to run for president in 2024. Ko’s remarks came after his close aide, former Taipei City Government adviser Tsai Pi-ju (蔡壁如), on Tuesday during another interview said that Ko is likely to run for president in 2024. In the interview, Ko was asked why he decided not to run in this presidential election, as he had been viewed as a strong contender. The host asked if Ko meant he would run for president in 2024. “If everything goes well, I will run [for president],” he said, adding that he would gradually prepare for that goal.

By Lin Chia-nan / Staff reporterNational Taiwan University’s (NTU) pharmacogenomics laboratory has provided genetic testing to more than one-third of lung cancer patients receiving targeted treatment and generated revenue of nearly NT$400 million (US$13.11 million) over the past eight years, NTU medical biotechnology professor Yu Sung-liang (俞松良) said yesterday. Over the past eight years, the laboratory provided genetic testing to more than one-third of lung cancer patients receiving epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) target therapy in Taiwan, he said. It has produced more than 25,000 genetic testing reports for doctors to administer personalized therapies and disease prediction, Yu said. To address the problem, the laboratory developed non-invasive testing methods, such as using a patient’s serum samples to screen for tumor DNA, Yu said. The laboratory in June stopped providing testing service for people undergoing EGFR therapy, as the health ministry in September included it in the National Health Insurance program, he said.

The report, which was released by Germanwatch, along with the Climate Action Network and the NewClimate Institute, on the sidelines of the global climate summit in Madrid, evaluated the performance of 61 countries. Referred to as “Chinese Taipei” in the report, Taiwan scored 6.02 points in managing GHG emissions, 1.56 points in promoting renewable energy, 7.54 points in energy use and 8.21 points in climate policy, totaling 23.33 points, which placed the nation at 59th. In the GHG emissions category, Taiwan was ranked 60th, only better than Saudi Arabia, the report showed. In terms of climate policy, Taiwan was placed at 40th, with its national climate policy performance evaluated as “low,” the report showed. Mom Loves Taiwan chairwoman Gloria Hsu (徐光蓉) and Environmental Quality Protection Foundation chairman Hsieh Ying-shih (謝英士) were named as contributors for the policy evaluation of Taiwan in the report.

Chinese paramilitary forces have deployed to Shenzhen, just outside Hong Kong, since the protests began in June. Neither they nor the thousands of Chinese troops garrisoned in Hong Kong itself have so far been deployed to confront the protesters. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) says that Taiwan must be united with China, even if by force. That agreement allowed Hong Kong to keep its civil liberties, independent courts and capitalist system, although many in Hong Kong accuse Beijing of undermining those freedoms under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). We’ll continue to send out goodwill gestures to China,” Wu said.

Trading on the Emerging Stock Market, a preparatory board for the nation’s two main bourses, is restricted to securities firms, therefore the company’s shares would not be open to public subscription, Hsu said. Tigerair plans to shift its shares to the Taiwan Stock Exchange in the fourth quarter of next year, Hsu told the Taipei Times. CAL sold 45 million Tigerair Taiwan shares to its stockholders in September and now holds less than a 70 percent stake in its subsidiary. Tigerair Taiwan in August said it would add 15 new Airbus A320neo aircraft to its fleet from 2021. As the number of passengers to the two destinations has steadily increased, the carrier plans to raise ticket prices next year, which should help improve its profitability, he added.

By Shelley Shan / Staff reporterThe People First Party (PFP) yesterday said that it plans to propose legislation that would implement “total nursing care,” which it said would only raise National Health Insurance (NHI) premiums by about NT$40 (US$1.31) per month. The “total nursing care” proposal was presented by Eva Teng (滕西華), a long-time advocate for the rights of patients and the physically challenged, as well as the PFP’s No. The total value of the nursing care market is about NT$60 billion and most caretakers are women, Teng said. “If the government enforced a total nursing care policy, hospitals could train caretakers to complement the care of doctors and nurses, based on their different medical specialties,” she said. Total nursing care should be covered by the NHI, she said.

The National Health Insurance Administration (NHIA) said that it found about 32,000 “irregular” declarations made by the hospital between January and March. Hospital visits in which the diagnostic fee is NT$0 can be excluded from calculations of visits for the policy, she added. In the past, the hospital filed about 10,000 declarations per quarter in which the diagnostic fee was NT$0, Lin said. When the NHIA asked the hospital about the discrepancies, the hospital claimed that those declarations were due to “integrated” outpatient appointments or return visits for medical examinations, she said. As such, the NHIA would require the hospital to repay the NT$55 million in subsidies, she added.

By Crystal Hsu / Staff reporterThe Ministry of Finance yesterday said it collected NT$210 billion (US$6.88 billion) in tax revenue for last month, a 1.7 percent increase from last year, driven by revenue from securities transactions. Tax revenue from securities transactions increased 29.8 percent to NT$8.9 billion last month, as average daily market turnover increased 19.89 percent to NT$154.9 billion, the ministry said. In the first 11 months of the year, tax revenue from securities transactions totaled NT$82.2 billion, down 12.3 percent from a year earlier, ministry data showed. Business tax revenue increased NT$2.7 billion, while tax revenue from land value gains rose NT$1.6 billion, Department of Statistics Deputy Director-General Chen Yu-feng (陳玉豐) said. The government collected NT$2.33 trillion in tax revenue in the first 11 months, ahead of its budget target for this year by 3.4 percent, Chen said.

By Sherry Hsiao / Staff reporterThirteen political parties have signed a statement supporting partially paid leave for workers who need time off to make arrangements for family members with long-term care needs, three Taipei-based groups said yesterday. The 104 groups who signed the petition included organizations focused on labor rights, gender issues and social welfare, among other topics, they said. Of the 19 parties, which all have nominees for legislator-at-large seats in the Jan. 11 elections, 13 returned the letters signed, the groups said. “We were definitely pleased to see the third-force political parties respond,” she said. The need to care for family members with a disability or dementia affects the jobs of about 2.31 million workers in Taiwan, the groups said, citing ministry estimates.

Thomson Reuters Foundation, LONDONThe use of “they” to describe someone who does not identify as male or female gained ground on Tuesday, when US dictionary Merriam-Webster picked it as the word of the year. Merriam-Webster said that searches for that use of the word, which was added to its dictionary in September, had increased by more than 300 percent this year as more and more people identify as nonbinary — neither a man nor a woman. The Oxford English Dictionary and Dictionary.com last year both published articles online saying that the singular “they” was grammatically correct and had been used since at least the late 14th century. “More recently, though, they has also been used to refer to one person whose gender identity is nonbinary,” Merriam-Webster said on its Web site. The shift comes as increasing numbers of people elect to use a gender-neutral pronoun to describe themselves.